Radix

Nefandi had left the car at the pool's edge, and as he dashed toward the boy's cries he opened himself to the beauty and the strangeness of what he knew was the last space of his life.
Sumner reeled through the narrow doorway, grappling with the corpse, and Nefandi pulled up short. The fat boy's broad body was quavering with his frantic efforts to break loose. The sleeves of Jeanlu's blouse had been torn away, and her knobby, sticklike arms flashed blackly. His shirt was sweat-slick, and his thick legs were staggering as he danced crazily along the pool rim. From the wild look in his eyes and the whiteness of his lips, his whole face starched with fear, it was clear that he was going to collapse any instant. But he didn't. Even as the twisted, split lips of the corpse unpeeled and the crumpled face began hissing a hot, putrid vapor, he continued to buck.
Then the chanting began. As Sumner pulled at the iron-locked arms, swinging the body against trees, hauling it through the mud and weeds, it began to mumble the sounds of some impossible language. Cooing, clicking, snapping a rhythm that made the scalp at the back of the boy's head constrict. The icy mist in his chest welled up in his throat and fogged his eyes. He was keeling. All his strength evaporated, and the dead flesh hanging from his neck dragged him forward and down.
Nefandi could see Jeanlu's blue psynergy sparking against Sumner's golden bodylight. Streamers of blue radiance were smoking away, unable to get close. But the gold kha was shuddering. In an instant it would blink out.
Nefandi's hand moved impulsively. Sparked by blood-logic, he activated his field-inducer and lashed out. The burst was a tight packet of high-frequency sonics that caught the corpse between her shoulder blades.
Jeanlu's plant-fiber vest crackled into flames, and Sum-ner broke her grip. He lurched to his feet and tottered backwards. The corpse yawled, enraged and plaintive, flailing its arms as the flames consumed the vest and started in on the trousers. With a howl the burning body pitched forward, rocked upright, and dashed for Sumner.
Sumner ran away from the pool, the corpse lurching behind, its outstretched, flame-sheathed arms closing in. De-spite his bulk Sumner moved quickly, loping past the pool toward the Flats. Jeanlu was so close that when the flames ignited the brood jewels around her neck, the string of explo-sions peppered his back with pieces of burning flesh. But he didn't look back. Behind him the corpse crumbled beneath flares of green flame.
Nefandi watched the corpse burn a moment before turn-ing away. He was surprised that the boy wasn't dead. With a smile that didn't touch his eyes he watched Sumner flee through the trees and out of sight. It would have been good to follow him, but his work wasn't done.
He moved through the tamarind trees toward the cot-tage, his field-inducer at maximum, warping sounds and belling vision. The flies frenzied around him, hazing off the perime-ter of his field and black-dazzling around him. The bent air sliced light into colors, and he saw the cottage rainbowed in sunfire.
Through the adobe wall's opacity the sensex revealed Corby: a small but dense purpling lying inside the cottage. Something had happened to the voor's body—its shadow was unshaped and pulsing eerily. Nefandi focused his weapon for maximal output and fired a long wail of energy at the sensex image.
The side of the house flared apart, and a cyclone of fire gusted through the timbers. The heat of the blast pushed Nefandi back, and he retreated to the brink of the pool. From there he watched until the shred of purple kha and the throbbing voorshape were glared out of sight by the confla-gration.
The wind flushed brighter and colder, and Nefandi turned his back on the flame-cored house and walked to the car. The flies had veered off, but the air was filling with something else—a stillness, the transparence of the violence he had created.
At the car he stopped and tried to convince himself that mind was indeed continuity. He watched sunlight fill the surface of the pool like flowers—and he felt that he was verging on a drunken dream. Don't spook yourself.
He looked back at the cottage. It was huge with fire, and no glint of the voor showed. Still—absence surrounded him like a crucible. He had to be severe with himself to keep from quaking when he stooped into the driver's seat and started the car. As he drove off, he knew that the voor was not dead—he had merely helped to change it.
As soon as Sumner realized he was no longer being chased, he collapsed and lay doubled over, retching for breath. It was a while before he was able to stand, his head muddled and heavy. There was nowhere to go but back to the cottage. He limped through the scaffolds of trees cautiously. When he saw the smoldering nest of tarry ash and bones that was Jeanlu's body, he took a deep breath and walked the long way around the pool.
Near the cottage, the flies ravaged him, yet he stopped walking and stood staring. The house was blazing—and his car was gone.
The flies frenzied over his face and neck. He stood stunned and still, watching flamedevils dancing through the roof and out the windows. He turned and stared beyond the dead branches of the trees idling in the wind, at a thread of dust vanishing in the west.
Sumner brushed the flies from his face and scurried past the pulpy trees and the worm-festering grasses toward Rigalu Flats. He waddled up the rise and skidded quickly down the other side. Once he was on the green sand the stinging swarm veered off, and he was able to stop.
He plopped down in the sand and vomited. When he was all squeezed out he got up, pointed himself toward McClure, and hobbled off. Though he was sick with horror and fatigue, he forced himself to move. The grating roar of the timbers and the tile roof going up in flames bellowed after him like the rusty gears of a vast machine.
Nothing has been created. Everything is a shadow of what it will be.
Corby held to that voor chant. The fire was too hot for his shape, and in a moment he would lapse into the pattern itself, unsure of how he would go on—or if.
Or if—nothing is a shadow, everything has already been created— everything is fated.
With the last fineness of his reasoning he focused on Sumner. The lusk was broken. He had to reach his father. The pattern had to go on. He had to stop the Delph.
With the last of his will, he reached out.
Sumner stayed close to the fringe of the Flats to avoid the flies. After he had shuffled through the sand for over an hour, the terrible wind died down, and the flies were gone.
He ventured across a grassy plain toward a grove of willows. Halfway there, the scaly hulk of a pangolin reared out of the tall grass and honked angrily. Sumner backed off, slowly at first, then more quickly, breaking into a scramble as he neared the Flats. Safe again among the green dunes and the maze of fluted rocks, he plodded on.
It was a hopeless journey. Because of the pangolins, there was no chance of cutting across the fertile land to an active highway or even of getting water until dusk. And then the night creatures would be out.
As he slouched along he tried to measure his situation coolly. McClure was the nearest town, and it was 189 kilome-ters away. It would take him days to get there on foot. Even with provisions he doubted he could get past the predators.
Face it, zerohero, he said to himself. You 're trashed.
The sun was a gold circle behind him. To his right, lunatic clouds, red and jumbled, were running with the hori-zon, towering majestic to twenty thousand meters. Skeleton-shadows covered the desert floor, and the tall, curved rockshapes catching the light around him blazed a hot green.
He could still taste the rot smell of Jeanlu's body. He wanted to tear off his soiled clothes, but the stench was on his skin as well. The loops of singed pain around his throat and the chill in his muscles made it impossible to gather his wits.